1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a printing apparatus and a printing method of printing an image on a printing medium.
2. Related Art
Printing apparatuses of printing images by attaching color materials such as inks to surfaces of printing media (for example, printing paper or the like) have been developed and widely used. Further, with the widespread of the printing apparatuses, various types of paper as printing media have been provided. As a result, in the recent printing apparatuses, images can be printed with more preferable image quality by image processing according to the types of printing media.
Here, the types of printing media are typically set for the printing apparatuses before the start of printing by operators of the printing apparatuses, however, technologies that enable the printing apparatuses to automatically discriminate the types of printing media have been developed. For example, in a paper type discrimination device disclosed in JP-A-2006-58261, a technology that enables discrimination of the types of printing media (here, printing paper) by applying light to surfaces of the printing media and detecting intensity of the light transmitted through the printing media or intensity of the light reflected on the surfaces of the printing media has been proposed.
Alternatively, in a printing apparatus disclosed in JP-A-2011-93183, a technology for simply discriminating the types of printing media by detecting drive torque of a paper feed motor that feeds the printing media has been also proposed.
However, with the increasing types of printing media, it has been difficult to discriminate the types of printing media with sufficient accuracy using the above proposed technologies, and a problem of difficulty in appropriate image printing has arisen.